Hope you don't mind me butting in here, but as both a veteran AND a public school grad...I found myself thinking the exact same thing Tax-chick stated.
Not all public schools are bad, of course, and graduating from one doesn't make someone automatically ignorant, by any means. But he was kind of contradicting himself. BTW, I learned about the Spanish Armada, ect. in public school. I learned more by reading on my own, however.
I don't know how knowledge of the Spanish Armada relates to Iraq but it gets extremely tiresome to hear the nonsense about public education which appears to be gospel here. My late wife was a public school teacher and there never was a better. My sons went to public and private schools in Chicago. The former is a Navy Nuke the latter a senior at IIT on the Dean's List.
Ideological blinders draw my attention and comment.